A comprehensive food reference covers all aspects of the history and culture of Italian cuisine, including dishes, ingredients, cooking methods, implements, regional specialties, the appeal of Italian cuisine, and outside culinary influences.

The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, first published in 1999, became, almost overnight, an immense success, winning prizes and accolades around the world. Its combination of serious food history, culinary expertise, and entertaining serendipity, with each page offering an infinity of perspectives, was recognized as unique. The study of food and food history is a new discipline, but one that has developed exponentially in the last twenty years. There are now university departments, international societies, learned journals, and a wide-ranging literature exploring the meaning of food in the daily lives of people around the world, and seeking to introduce food and the process of nourishment into our understanding of almost every compartment of human life, whether politics, high culture, street life, agriculture, or life and death issues such as conflict and war. The great quality of this Companion is the way it includes both an exhaustive catalogue of the foods that nourish humankind - whether they be fruit from tropical forests, mosses scraped from adamantine granite in Siberian wastes, or body parts such as eyeballs and testicles - and a richly allusive commentary on the culture of food, whether expressed in literature and cookery books, or as dishes peculiar to a country or community. The new edition has not sought to dim the brilliance of Davidson's prose. Rather, it has updated to keep ahead of a fast-moving area, and has taken the opportunity to alert readers to new avenues in food studies.

Offering a panoramic view of the history and culture of food and drink in America with fascinating entries on everything from the smell of asparagus to the history of White Castle, and the origin of Bloody Marys to jambalaya, the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink provides a concise, authoritative, and exuberant look at this modern American obsession. Ideal for the food scholar and food enthusiast alike, it is equally appetizing for anyone fascinated by Americana, capturing our culture and history through what we love most--food!Building on the highly praised and deliciously browseable two-volume compendium the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, this new work serves up everything you could ever want to know about American consumables and their impact on popular culture and the culinary world. Within its pages for example, we learn that Lifesavers candy owes its success to the canny marketing idea of placing the original flavor, mint, next to cash registers at bars. Patrons who bought them to mask the smell of alcohol on their breath before heading home soon found they were just as tasty sober and the company began producing other flavors.Edited by Andrew Smith, a writer and lecturer on culinary history, the Companion serves up more than just trivia however, including hundreds of entries on fast food, celebrity chefs, fish, sandwiches, regional and ethnic cuisine, food science, and historical food traditions. It also dispels a few commonly held myths. Veganism, isn't simply the practice of a few "hippies," but is in fact wide-spread among elite athletic circles. Many of the top competitors in the Ironman and Ultramarathon events go even further, avoiding all animal products by following a strictly vegan diet. Anyone hungering to know what our nation has been cooking and eating for the last three centuries should own the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. DT Nearly 1,000 articles on American food and drink, from the curious to the commonplace DT Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of historical photographs and color images DT Includes informative lists of food websites, museums, organizations, and festivals

A sweet tooth is a powerful thing. Babies everywhere seem to smile when tasting sweetness for the first time, a trait inherited, perhaps, from our ancestors who foraged for sweet foods that were generally safer to eat than their bitter counterparts. But the "science of sweet" is only the beginning of a fascinating story, because it is not basic human need or simple biological impulse that prompts us to decorate elaborate wedding cakes, scoop ice cream into a cone, or drop sugar cubes into coffee. These are matters of culture and aesthetics, of history and society, and we might ask many other questions. Why do sweets feature so prominently in children's literature? When was sugar called a spice? And how did chocolate evolve from an ancient drink to a modern candy bar? The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets explores these questions and more through the collective knowledge of 265 expert contributors, from food historians to chemists, restaurateurs to cookbook writers, neuroscientists to pastry chefs. The Companion takes readers around the globe and throughout time, affording glimpses deep into the brain as well as stratospheric flights into the world of sugar-crafted fantasies. More than just a compendium of pastries, candies, ices, preserves, and confections, this reference work reveals how the human proclivity for sweet has brought richness to our language, our art, and, of course, our gastronomy. In nearly 600 entries, beginning with "à la mode" and ending with the Italian trifle known as "zuppa inglese," the Companion traces sugar's journey from a rare luxury to a ubiquitous commodity. In between, readers will learn about numerous sweeteners (as well-known as agave nectar and as obscure as castoreum, or beaver extract), the evolution of the dessert course, the production of chocolate, and the neurological, psychological, and cultural responses to sweetness. The Companion also delves into the darker side of sugar, from its ties to colonialism and slavery to its addictive qualities. Celebrating sugar while acknowledging its complex history, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets is the definitive guide to one of humankind's greatest sources of pleasure. Like kids in a candy shop, fans of sugar (and aren't we all?) will enjoy perusing the wondrous variety to be found in this volume.

The Oxford Companion to Cheese answers a clear call for the kind of subject-defining reference work that The Oxford Companion to Wine achieved. It is the first truly comprehensive cheese book, containing 855 A-Z scholarly, yet accessible entries on the history, culture, and science of cheese making and cheese enjoyment, worldwide. An astonishing 325 authors contributed entries, residing in 35 countries. They included cheesemakers, cheesemongers, dairy scientists, anthropologists, food historians, journalists, archaeologists, and on, from backgrounds as diverse as the topics they write about. This landmark encyclopedia is the most wide-ranging, comprehensive, and reliable reference work on cheese available.

A Cultural History of Plants in the Early Modern Era covers the period from 1400 to 1650, a time of discovery and rediscovery, of experiment and innovation. Renaissance learning brought ancient knowledge to modern European consciousness whilst exploration placed all the continents in contact with one another. The dissemination of knowledge was further speeded by the spread of printing. New staples and spices, new botanical medicines, and new garden plants all catalysed agriculture, trade, and science. The great medical botanists of the period attempted no less than what Marlowe's Dr Faustus demanded - a book “wherein I might see all plants, herbs, and trees that grow upon the earth.” Human impact on plants and our botanical knowledge had irrevocably changed. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Plants presents the first comprehensive history of the uses and meanings of plants from prehistory to today. The themes covered in each volume are plants as staple foods; plants as luxury foods; trade and exploration; plant technology and science; plants and medicine; plants in culture; plants as natural ornaments; the representation of plants. Andrew Dalby is an independent scholar and writer, based in France. Annette Giesecke is Professor of Classics at the University of Delaware, USA. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Plants set. General Editors: Annette Giesecke, University of Delaware, USA, and David Mabberley, University of Oxford, UK.

Discover the cuisine of a secret part of southernmost Tuscany, known as La Costa D’Argento — the silver coast, in the second edition of Acquacotta. In this cookbook, Tuscan-based, Australian-born writer and photographer Emiko Davies has compiled and adapted her Italian family’s best-loved recipes from Capalbio, Monte Argentario, Giglio Island and inland to the hot springs of Saturnia and the ancient Pitigliano. It is a celebration of the region that's named for the shimmery salt-and-pepper sand along this part of the Tyrrhenian Sea, its rolling hills, long beaches, overgrown fig trees, rambling vineyards – and rich culinary history. The latest iteration of Acquacotta features a beautiful new cover and a vegetarian and gluten-free index that highlights a different side to Italian cuisine. In words and pictures, Emiko guides readers through the use of local ingredients, as well as sharing the history of rustic, storied dishes including scampi and potato soup, hand-rolled strozzapreti noodles, spinach and ricotta tortelli, chestnut gnocchi and the classic fig and chocolate bread, pagnotella. Plus, of course, the book’s namesake acquacotta, a quintessential Maremman peasant dish that captures the spirit of this special place.